(Original post by py0alb)
Not necessarily by definition, more by practice. If there were a good reason not to eat pork, then no-one would eat pork. But there isn't any good reason as far as I am aware, so only the superstitious minority refuse to eat pork.

When you say "there isn't any good reason" you mean "science and secular morality haven't provided a strong reason". That's why I say that your earlier "challenge" was bogus by definition since you ask for something that you have already defined out of existence.

As an aside - there might well be a very good reason not to do something and people would still do it. Smoking?

(Original post by TimmonaPortella)
Yes, religion teaches plenty of arbitrary rules which lead to nothing but a decrease in people's freedom to live and enjoy themselves which science and secular morality do not. Happy?

I am thanks but I think you might have not followed the thread of discussion properly. I was responding to a challenge to identify something that religion taught which could not also have been taught by science and secular morality. I was merely pointing out that the person posing the challenge had pre-defined out any possible answer.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
Yes, I did read what he said, but he can't, for example, explain why Quantum Physics would contradict me (which was a point that he raised earlier on in the discussion)...

Firstly, the smileys are irritating.

Secondly, did you even read what I said? What you've put here is no answer to it.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
Have you ever saw evolution with your own eyes? Tell me, what is your basis of belief for such a theory? The chances of that first cell being formed are so incredibly low (not impossible, just so low that I cannot see how such could happen)...
Well, was everything was and always will be? Is evolution an On-Going Endeavor? I've never saw it happen, have you?
What do you have to say to that?

Yes you have seen evidence of evolution happening. It's called the common cold. If it didn't evolve it would be like chicken pox in that you catch it once and you have resistance to it for the rest of your life.

If evolution doesn't happen how come we can't cure HIV? The reason we can't cure it is it keeps mutating and the immune system doesn't regard the new strain as the one it's already identified. It keeps mutating and evolving every time a new drug given or a new treatment is developed, so that it keeps reproducing.

In animals, the peppered moth, if you release a population of moths into a forest, the colour of subsequent generations will reflect the colour of the trees in the forest as the ones that camoflague themselves successfully will reproduce. The ones that don't get caught by birds and die.

The probability of the first cell forming being low is irrelevent, as we know it happened as we're here. It also isn't that low as most early cells were basically collections of chemical reactions.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
Yes, I did read what he said, but he can't, for example, explain why Quantum Physics would contradict me (which was a point that he raised earlier on in the discussion)...

I've left the quantum physics aspects to the people who raised it (and, no, it wasn't me - do you pay attention to whom your are speaking?), though they certainly disprove your point, as a quick bit of googling will show you.

You still haven't answered questions I raised in my very first post quoting you.

(Original post by TimmonaPortella)
Firstly, the smileys are irritating.

Secondly, did you even read what I said? What you've put here is no answer to it.

You: So you have to take evolution on faith!!!

Me: No he doesn't.

You: But you can't contradict me with quantum physics!!!

...

You're forming a strawman arguemnet here, I said that he had to take science on with his faith then and yes I probably did reply to the worng person by accident...
...my point still remains valid though.

PS. Just disable the images on your browser if smilies annoy you that much, they're an element of chat rooms that are used for portraying emotional signals...

(Original post by Good bloke)
I've left the quantum physics aspects to the people who raised it (and, no, it wasn't me - do you pay attention to whom your are speaking?), though they certainly disprove your point, as a quick bit of googling will show you.

You still haven't answered questions I raised in my very first post quoting you.

OK, I replied to the wrong person but I beleive that I did reply to that point you are referring to...

(Original post by UniOfLife)
When you say "there isn't any good reason" you mean "science and secular morality haven't provided a strong reason". That's why I say that your earlier "challenge" was bogus by definition since you ask for something that you have already defined out of existence.

As an aside - there might well be a very good reason not to do something and people would still do it. Smoking?

Well yes. Ultimately, religion teaches us two sets of things, 1) stuff we already knew, and 2) complete rubbish.

"Don't kill each other" falls into the first category, "don't eat pork" falls into the 2nd.

If your only argument is to complain that I have "narrowed" the definition of "things worth knowing" to only include things that observations of evidence, logical reasoning, and secular morality can teach us, then, jeez, go ahead.

(Original post by Good bloke)
I suspect he doesn't read posts or, if he does, he ignores what has been posted so that he doesn't have to answer our points. He certainly doesn't pay attention to who posts what.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
...my point still remains valid though.

It doesn't remain valid because it never was valid. He accepts evolution because he has seen the evidence. He reasons from that evidence that evolution is true. That is not faith. It is not even close to being equivalent to the reasoning "I believe in god because he can't be disproved and because I have faith that he's real". That statement, which is fairly representative of the general religious position, has no connection with evidence or reason.

(Original post by TimmonaPortella)
It doesn't remain valid because it never was valid. He accepts evolution because he has seen the evidence. He reasons from that evidence that evolution is true. That is not faith. It is not even close to being equivalent to the reasoning "I believe in god because he can't be disproved and because I have faith that he's real". That statement, which is fairly representative of the general religious position, has no connection with evidence or reason.

NOBODY has made a valid contradiction against my thory that disproved evolution (I even referred to that unicelluar creature that Darwin spoke of when he was discussing the origin of life)...
...so by that token, yes my point does still remian valid...

(Original post by TimmonaPortella)
It doesn't remain valid because it never was valid. He accepts evolution because he has seen the evidence. He reasons from that evidence that evolution is true. That is not faith. It is not even close to being equivalent to the reasoning "I believe in god because he can't be disproved and because I have faith that he's real". That statement, which is fairly representative of the general religious position, has no connection with evidence or reason.

...just to make an additivie contribution to my previous post what gave rise to this first creature? Was it a combination of water, sunlight and chemicals? By that scope there must have been a lot (even a backyard pond can harvest BILLIONS of these microscopic creatures) and if they were a lot, then there must be an exponential number of humans (unless the numbers were reduced due to conditions and survival of the fittst etc...). NONE of you have still proven to me why there could of been a first creature in the first place though...
...by chance were the conditions right? I don't believe that!

Why not? I am confident that, probably within your lifetime or that of your children, scientists will create life in the laboratory from simulated pre-life conditions on Earth. One thing that currently seems likely is that the sunlight you mentioned won't be one of those conditions, as it is throught that the first life probably formed around sea-bed volcanoes deep in the ocean.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
...but what else do you dclare the attribute of the causer of all things caused whilst being unchanged itself to?

This sentence doesn't make any sense.

Well, perhaps AI would be developed one day but that would mean doing away with the computer architcture used to run your iPhone siri or your Honda Assimo - which is a robot - and starting afresh (as the Chinese room analogy will still remain true) and acctually seeking to build a machine that would start drawing in information from its senses from birth and using that to build an indispensable map of reality (which can be contextually cued by its cognition, which theologically is the soul that becomes coupled with the matter of the body, and used to come up with a fight-or-flight response to the detcted stimuli!)...

Not necessarily. You make the assumption that our brains don't work under a set of rules that could be replicated by a computer working on a different set of rules. However, I think the evidence points towards there being an ultimate "solution" in the end for intelligence and neurology. We can certainly investigate the unconscious mind using animals, the only reason neurology isn't progressing faster for the conscious mind is that we don't know if animals have a conscious, and we can't go around chopping up humans' brains like we do with animals to investigate for example, the medullary respiratory group.

There are two refutations to your idea of a causal regress. Firstly, and more simply, is that there is no "end" to a regress unless one item is given special treatment-why do we label your initial cause "gOD"? Why is it not subject to the rules that you said everything else has to have? In other words, why does everything have a cause but gOD does not have a cause according to you? This is a logical fallacy called special pleading-you claim special status for something to prove it has special status, that proof relies on the assumption that gOD has special status, hence it is a type of circular reasoning.

Secondly, quantum refutes your idea of everything in a loop needing a cause, because it is not determined whether one thing happens or the other when we don't observe something. By extension, if one situation in exactly the same conditions can cause two different outcomes, it cannot be a loop - it will break out of the loop. I don't understand the quantum very well, but my sister has previously explained it to me in lay terms. I suggest you look at slit refraction experiments in the context of quantum and make your own conclusions.

(Original post by bordercollies10)
NOBODY has made a valid contradiction against my thory that disproved evolution (I even referred to that unicelluar creature that Darwin spoke of when he was discussing the origin of life)...
...so by that token, yes my point does still remian valid...

(Original post by bordercollies10)
...just to make an additivie contribution to my previous post what gave rise to this first creature? Was it a combination of water, sunlight and chemicals? By that scope there must have been a lot (even a backyard pond can harvest BILLIONS of these microscopic creatures) and if they were a lot, then there must be an exponential number of humans (unless the numbers were reduced due to conditions and survival of the fittst etc...). NONE of you have still proven to me why there could of been a first creature in the first place though...
...by chance were the conditions right? I don't believe that!